Customer Reviews

The Collected Poems of A. E. Housman

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Unrequited love and youthful death are the author's recurrent themes. Always forthright and devoid of the esoteric and modernistic qualities of more revered poets, Housman's work, though imbued with a pronounced melancholy, is never strident or sanctimonious. It is through the symmetry of theme that Housman achieves the solemnity which lends these justly celebrated poems their stature.

I feel that any discussion of A. E. Housman's poetry should first acknowledge that he was never a poet in the same sense as Whitman, Auden or Ginsberg. he was first, and foremost, a scholar, the Chair of Latin at Cambridge and an academic legend. Thus it seems churlish for his detractors to take the rather meagre amount of poetry he produced and deride it for it's lack of thematic multiplicity.

A closeted homosexual, Housman's poetry is perhaps most distinctive for it allusive qualities. One revels in the allegorical poem XVIII from Additional Poems: "Oh they're taking him to prison for the colour of his hair." Perhaps my favorite in this collection full of favorites is XXXI from More Poems:

"Because I liked you better
Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us
We parted, stiff and dry;
'Good-bye', said you, 'forget me.'
'I will, no fear' said I.

If here, where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming
The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
Was one that kept his word."

Haunting. First rate. A masterful collection.

Housman is a wonderful, lyrical poet. I bought this collection after having seen The Invention of Love on the London stage.

Most beautiful of all, to my mind, is the poem entitled "To an Athlete Dying Young". This was the eulogy read by Isak Dinesen at Denys Finch-Hatton's funeral in the movie "Out of Africa". The poem, which was originally included in "A Shropshire Lad" (1896) begins:

"The time you won your town the race, We chaired you through the market place. Man and boy stood cheering by and home we brought you shoulder high. Today the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home. And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town. Smart lad! to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not stay And early though the laurel grows It withers quicker than the rose... And round that early laurelled head Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead, And find, unwithered on its curls, A garland. Briefer than a girl's."

A very moving and sad poem. Many of Housman's other poems are of a similar, outstanding quality. He was not a prolific poet, but he was certainly a great one. Great pleasure will be found in this collection.

I don't know what I'd do without this book. I stumbled on Housman more or less by accident in an anthology and just fell in love -- so much emotion so perfectly crystallized in such lovely little lyrics, beautiful regardless of what connection you make to it. I can't recommend this highly enough; somehow, despite the melancholy, Housman's verse retains a power to comfort and assure in even the most dire of situations. That, I suppose, is why it was written years ago "for those unhappy fellows, unborn and unbegot, for them to read when they're in trouble and I am not."

Absolutely necessary reading for any poetry lover. If by some terrible mistake you have so far missed Housman, you should make up for it immediately. Don't waste your time reading reviews, just get the book asap!

Housman's poetry is very gloomy; considering that all the pictures I saw of him in my high school English IV class looked as if he has a stick shoved up his __. I recommend "To an Athlete Dying Young" number 19 in his collection called A Shropshire Lad. Still strangely relevant since it's first writing way back in 1896, it's just a really good example of really vivid poetry done by a master.

A.E., Housman's superb poem, "To an Athlete Dying Young", cannot help but bring to mind all the young men who perished in aerial combat. You knew some. I knew some. We are now moving off stage and we cannot help but hope and pray that others will carry on the task of remembrance. I drive by Putterham Circle in South Brookline, Massachusetts, frequently and I note that the wooden sign dedicating the traffic circle to my old friend Staff Sgt. Frank Ryan is in need of replacement.

What brings this to mind is a letter from a Fred Farnsworth (email address: FredieF@aol.com) of Los Alamos, New Mexico. He is interested in the life of his late cousin, Lt. Everett Farnsworth, of Stillwater, Oklahoma. His cousin and Jimmy Stewart were close pals and used to double date the English girls who lived near the air field. I should note here that I have yet to hear one note of criticism of Jimmy either as an Airplane Commander, actor or as a human being.

Our correspondent says Jimmy told his cousin that he would honor him in a movie Stewart would make when he got back to the States. He gave Everett the name George Bailey in the movie we all have seen probably more than once. Its title was "It's a Wonderful Life".

Everett did not live to see the movie in which Stewart kept his promise. He was killed on a bombing mission when his badly shot- up Fortress went down in a Swiss lake. The name of the lake was Greifensee. Everett and one other were killed in the crash. Four other crewmen who had been ordered to bail out did so and survived. The plane was a B17G -serial no. 384BG/5545BS and it went down April 4, 1944. Anyone with information concerning the plane and its crew can forward it to "Vapor Trails".

As long as I am still here to tell the tale let me home you in a bit on my pal Frank Ryan. He was a rich kid from a very patriotic family. He had a U.S. Marine brother who fought on Tarawa if my memory serves. Frankie went to "Cranwell", a lahdeedah Jesuit boarding school in the Berkshires. I went to Boston College High, at that time a Dickensian Jebbie prep school in Boston's tough South End. It is still close to my heart after all these years. We both wound up among the very few Radio Operator Gunners who could read Latin. (I can say this without fear of correction because all my Latin teachers are dead.)

We both joined the Army Air Corp in Brookline but didn't see each other again until a couple of years later when we luckily met on a train back to Brookline. We were beginning the furloughs you get just before going overseas and presumably into combat. Frankie went to the Eighth Air Force whereas I wound up in the Tenth. I sent him a V-Mail from the 7th Bomb Groups airbase at Pandeveswar, Bengal soon after I got there. By this time the European air war was winding down. I wrote Frankie that he was one lucky guy because his war was just about finished whereas fliers in the CBI had a long way to go.

I sent the same note to Nate Douglas of Georgia whom I had met my first day of Basic Training and had been to CTD, Sioux Falls Radio School, and Gunnery School at Yuma. We said goodbye in Savannah where he was assigned to train on B17s and I was across town at Chatham Field training on Liberators.

A few weeks later I was sitting in front of a sweltering straw-roofed basha in Bengal, India, when a mail orderly came by and handed me the self-same V-Mails I had sent Ryan and Douglas. The orderly muttered "Sorry". Both V-Mails were stamp "Killed in Action."

Smart lad(s) to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not fade...
John Brennan, editor

I remember first discovering A. E. Housman in school when I read "A Shropshire Lad" and was rather impressed.

My favorite of his poems is "To An Athlete Dying Young". It moved me because it has a special connection with me, since now that my athletic days are over and I'm no longer a part of any team, I understand and can identify with the athlete who is once so glorious and yet his glory can be so short-lived.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"